ABOUT New Songs Fest

Songwriters are at the heart of our arts community and this is where we begin to grow the next season of songwriters. New Songs is a songwriting festival featuring four days of workshops, three evening concerts, multiple breakout and coaching sessions, practice space, and a professional production on stage in front of a public audience.
April 25 - 28th, 2024

Be one of our 25 artists in residence for the weekend!

VIDEO New Songs Fest

2024 WORKSHOP LEADS & COACHES

Rita Hosking

Host & Workshop Instructor

Ayla Nereo

Workshop Instructor

Royal Wood

Workshop Instructor

Conrad Sisk

Workshop Instructor

Brian Rivers

Workshop Instructor

Bryan Dyer

Workshop Instructor

Hannah Kile

Songwriting Coach

Sam Misner

Songwriting Coach

Paul Kamm

Songwriting Coach

Corinne West

Songwriting Coach

Bob Woods

Songwriting Coach

Juliet Gobert

Songwriting Coach

Workshop attendees get:

  • Four days of workshops with topics including songwriting, technical production, instrumental, and vocal/rhythm
  • One ticket to three concerts during the festival
  • Two coaching/feedback sessions
  • Lunch provided during the festival
  • Access to various practice rooms
  • A public performance on a professionally produced stage*


*Participants are encouraged but not required to perform a piece of work at the festival.

Limited spots are available - don't miss your chance to attend this year.

2024 FULL SCHEDULE

Thursday 4/25/24
What
Location
12 pm – 2 pm
Check In
Lobby
12:30 pm – 2 pm
Participant Meet & Greet / Tour
Lobby/ Gallery
2 pm – 3 pm
Break
3 pm – 4:30 pm
Repeat After Me with Rita Hosking
Off Center Stage
4:30 pm – 7 pm
Practice/ Free Time
Studios
5:30 pm – 6:15 pm
Q&A w/ Brett Dennen
Off Center Stage
7 pm – 8 pm
Doors open to the public
Lobby/ Gallery
8 pm – 10 pm
Concert: Brett Dennen, Opener TBD
Main Stage
Friday 4/26/24
What
What
9 am – 7 pm
Practice Rooms Open
Studios
10 am – 11:30 am
Free The Melody w/ Rita Hosking
Off Center Stage
12 pm – 1 pm
Lunch
Lobby/ Gallery
1 pm – 2:30 pm
Guitar Grooves and Chordal Moves with Brian Rivers (Instrumental)
Studios
2:30 pm – 3 pm
Movement Break
Studios, OCS
3 pm – 4:30 pm
Cover songs with Royal Wood
Studios
4:30 pm – 7 pm
Practice/ Free Time
Studios
5:30 pm – 6:15 pm
Q&A w/ Rufus Wainwright
Off Center Stage
7 pm – 8 pm
Doors open to public
8 pm – 10 pm
Concert: Rufus Wainwright w/ Royal Wood opening
Main Stage
Saturday 4/27/24
What
Location
9 am – 7 pm
Practice Rooms Open
Studios
10 am – 12 pm
Coaching Sessions
All Rooms
12 pm – 1 pm
Lunch
Lobby/ Gallery
1 pm – 2:30 pm
Vocal Improvisation/Circlesinging w/ Bryan Dyer (vocal/rhythm)
Studios
2:30 pm – 3 pm
Movement Break
3 pm – 4:30 pm
Receiving Song w/ Ayla Nereo
Off Center Stage
4:30 pm – 7 pm
Practice/ Free Time
Studios
7 pm – 8 pm
Doors open to public
Lobby / Gallery
8 pm – 10 pm
Concert: Ayla Nereo w/ HoneyWild
Main Stage
Sunday 4/28/24
What
Location
9 am – 5 pm
Practice Rooms Open
Studios
10 am – 12 pm
Coaching Sessions
All Rooms
12 pm – 1 pm
Lunch
Lobby/ Gallery
1 pm – 2 pm
Technical Production Workshop w/ Conrad Sisk
Main Stage
3 pm – 5 pm
Practice/ Free Time
All Rooms
5:30 pm – 8 pm
Songwriters Stage Time
Main Stage

2024 WORKSHOP LEADS, & COACHES

Rita Hosking • Host & Workshop Instructor

4/25 WORKSHOP: Repeat After Me

Repeated patterns are absolutely foundational to song. What are they? How are they useful? How can one keep from sounding TOO repetitive? Join us in pursuit of the “familiar yet changing.”

4/25 WORKSHOP: Free the Melody

How do melody, rhythm and lyric work together? We’ll experiment with all three, exploring worlds of possibility in the truest, unfettered form of a folk singer – without a lick of music theory.

 

BIO:

Rita’s style of country-folk has been lauded for story and sense of place, and her performances praised with capturing the audience. Honors include winner of the 2008 Dave Carter Memorial Songwriting Contest at the Sisters Folk Festival, finalist in the 2009 Telluride Music Festival Troubadour Contest, and honors in the International Songwriting Contest and West Coast Songwriters’ Association. “This California girl comes by her mountain music sensibility with true authenticity, with original songs deeply rooted in her family’s frontier experience,” (Dan Ruby, FestivalPreview.com) and Rita’s fans call her “the real deal.” A descendant of Cornish miners who sang in the mines, Rita grew up with deep regard for folk music and the power of the voice. 

Ayla Nereo • Workshop Instructor

4/27 WORKSHOP: Receiving Song

A special in-person workshop with international artist Ayla Nereo, who will share her vast array of tools and practices for expanding the creative channel, sparking inspiration, getting into receptivity, and co-creating songs in the moment. Includes a very special demo from Ayla, sharing a unique behind the scenes look into her process of songwriting in real time, and collaboratively creating a song together live.

Conrad Sisk • Workshop Instructor

4/28 WORKSHOP: Intro Technical Production

Learn the basics of what it takes to perform on a professional stage with the assistance of technical staff. This workshop is a practical introduction to prepare for the New Songs Stage Time performance on Sunday evening.

Royal Wood • Workshop Instructor

4/26 WORKSHOP: Cover Songs

The power of reinventing a well known hook.

BIO:

Singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Royal Wood has established himself as a true musical talent. Since being proclaimed “Songwriter of the Year” by iTunes, Wood has continued to evolve and hone his musical craft while maintaining a unique identity. His eighth full-length studio album, 2022’s What Tomorrow Brings, was recently up “For Your Consideration” for BEST FOLK ALBUM at the 2024 Grammys

Brian Rivers • Workshop Instructor

4/26 WORKSHOP:

Guitar Grooves and Chordal Moves: Guitar hacks to expand your Songwriting

Are you ready to discover your innate musical knowledge lying untapped until now? Be ready to develop and apply new rhythmic and finger-picking techniques and to learn the simple “guitar hacks” to expand chord progressions and voicings. Every evolving songwriter will take away something they can implement today!

BIO:

Brian Rivers is an award-winning performer, educator, author, and founding member of Mumbo Gumbo. Brian has performed at numerous music festivals throughout the United States including three separate appearances at the Kerrville Folk Festival! As a clinician, Brian is known for providing participants with easy-to-implement tips and tricks.

Bryan Dyer • Workshop Instructor

4/27 WORKSHOP: Vocal Improvisation/Circlesinging

Are you sometimes a little tentative when it comes to being creative vocally? Are you comfortable singing beyond the melody of a song? In this workshop we’ll look at different ways to approach improvising and techniques to help us become more creative. We’ll also utilize Circlesinging – made popular by Bobby McFerrin in our learning process to help expand our vocal boundaries.

BIO:

Bryan S. Dyer is a multi-talented musician who not only sings but plays several instruments including bass guitar, percussion and piano; writes and arranges music, conducts choirs and groups, and works in television, radio and film. A veteran of some of the Bay Area’s top vocal groups including Street Sounds, SoVoSo, Slammin All Body Band, Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir and Chelle and Friends he also performs with Zadell, Rankin Scroo and Ginger, and R&B group, D.A.P. His musical experiences have him taken around the globe including several trips throughout Europe, Japan, South Korea and Jamaica. Bryan’s talents have landed him alongside such artist as Al Green, Bobby McFerrin, Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers, Huey Lewis & The News and Ladysmith Black Mambazo to name a few.

Hannah Kile • Songwriting Coach

BIO:

Over the last decade or so, award winning singer/songwriter Hannah Jane Kile —  has grown, along with her music, into a confident twenty-something musical hyphenate. 
This musical Chameleon’s blend of folk, jazz, classical and pop is delivered through a number of different vehicles: with the highly acclaimed folk trio Dear Darling; as vocalist/instrumentalist with the seven-piece ensemble Solabel; and as a solo artist with four self-penned albums.

Paul Kamm • Songwriting Coach

BIO:

Paul Kamm is an award winning songwriter who got his first paying gig at the age of 7 singing in a church choir outside Detroit.  But nights were spent listening to Motown on the radio before the usual knock on the door telling him to go to sleep. 

Arriving in Nevada City at 19, he quickly fell in love with the music scene here and became a prolific songwriter with many bands, including his longtime partnership with Eleanore MacDonald.

Paul and Eleanore released their newest collection of songs, ‘Djuna’s Lullaby’, in February of this year.

Paul is currently looking for the next song to reveal itself.

Sam Misner • Songwriting Coach

BIO:

Sam Misner is the main songwriter for the unclassifiable Northern California-based duo Misner & Smith. Known as much for their soaring vocal harmonies as they are for their poetic and technically precise songwriting, the pair has been touring and recording music for the past 20 years. Sam has also written music for several professional theater productions at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Sacramento Theater Company, and Marin Theater Company. Misner & Smith will be releasing their new album, All is Song, in April 2024.

Bob Woods • Songwriting Coach

BIO:

I got a nylon string guitar when I was thirteen. About a year later my grandmother, who was an organist, invited me to do a song at her church in Oakland. It held about 500 people and the service was broadcast on the radio. It never occurred to me to learn a song, so I wrote one.

In 1971 I joined my first real band and started playing for a living. I was, by far, the weakest in the band musically but I came with a collection of original songs that worked with audiences. In the mid-seventies I played with a singer that had worked as a staff writer in Nashville. We would hear him sketch out a song and six months later hear it on the radio. By then I viewed my music “career” both as a guitarist and songwriter and it’s been that way ever since.


I generally write songs that will work for my gigs. Sometimes I will write a song for other purposes or just because I want to. I figure a song works if the audience is singing along by the end.

Corinne West • Songwriting Coach

BIO:

Poet, singer, guitarist, and master tunesmith. Songs veiled and direct, untethered to genre, and feeling all the feels. Deeply emotive. To deep-dive into her songs is a free fall through terrain that’s lush and haunting. Powerful stuff. First time I heard her perform, it was one of those ‘stop dead in your tracks holy s*** kinda moments’. Corinne has released five independent albums, toured extensively for 20 years through North America, Europe, and India, and performing at the likes of Shrewsbury Festival (UK), Bergenfest (NOR), High Sierra Music Festival, Vancouver Folk Festival (CAN), Grassroots Festival, Joshua Tree Music Festival, Woody Guthrie Festival and the Kerrville Folk Festival. Corinne is also a wildly compelling multi-media visual artist. Through color, form, and texture, she captures ephemeral moments and fixes them in time, juxtaposing mystery with the temporal. For the winters she migrates to Joshua Tree for an Artist Residency under the stars at the Joshua Tree Music Festival venue. The San Francisco Chronicle boldly states she is “a singer with an angelic voice.”

Juliet Gobert • Songwriting Coach

BIO:

Juliet Gobert, singer, songwriter, self-taught guitarist and band leader of the Heifer Belles has been writing songs for as long as she can remember.   Her tunes range from togue in cheek to socially charged topics.   She has six albums to her credit and has performed with numerous local bands and opened for some of our favorite artists, Dan Hicks, The Alvin Brothers, Tony Furtado, Maria Maldar, Kenny Edwards and more.  Juliet has performed at Strawberry Music Festival, Kate Wolf, World Fest, High Sierra, Elko Cowboy Festival, American River Music Festival, Heber Falley Utah Cowboy Festival and more.
 
Juliet’s passion lies in writing and the helping others realize their dreams of performing.

PANELISTS

  • Jim Bruno

  • Peter Wilson

  • Hannah Jane Kile

  • Velvy Appleton

  • Paul Kamm

  • Royal Wood

COACHES

  • Jim Bruno
  • Paul Kamm
  • Hannah Jane Kile
  • Velvy Appleton
  • Peter Wilson
  • Mark Vieaux
  • Rita Hosking
  • Jamal Walker
  • Juliet Gobert
  • Jorell Bahena

Festival Cancellation / Refund Policy

Due to limited attendance and availability, we cannot guarantee refunds for attendee cancellation requests.  Under no circumstances will we be responsible for refunds for airline, hotel, or car reservations. We reserve the right to change or cancel any speaker, instructor, performer or session without notice.